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Among provocatives, the next best thing to good preaching is bad preaching. I have even more thoughts during or enduring it than at other times.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Age: 78 †
Born: 1803
Born: May 25
Died: 1882
Died: April 27
Biographer
Diarist
Essayist
Philosopher
Poet
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
R. W. Emerson
Waldo Emerson
Thoughts
Times
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Next
Enduring
Best
Preaching
Even
Endure
Thing
Communication
Good
Among

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Test of the poet is knowledge of love, For Eros is older than Saturn or Jove Never was poet, of late or of yore, Who was not tremulous with love-lore.
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The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.
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The difference between talent and genius is in the direction of the current: in genius, it is from within outward in talent from without inward.
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Every man is eloquent once in his life.
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Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit, and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day.
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It is an esoteric doctrine of society, that a little wickedness is good to make muscle as if conscience were not good for hands and legs.
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The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.
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America means opportunity, freedom, power.
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Human character evermore publishes itself. The most fugitive deed and word, the intimated purpose, express character.
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The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?
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The height, the deity of man is to be self-sustained, to need no gift, no foreign force. Society is good when it does not violate me, but best when it is likest to solitude.
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Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in. Embark, and the romance quits our vessel, and hangs on every other sail in the horizon.
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There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.
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Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. Their cousins can tell you nothing about them. They lived in their writings, and sotheir house and street life was trivial and commonplace. If you would know their tastes and complexions, the most admiring of their readers most resembles them.
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What is a man born for but to be a reformer, a remaker of what has been made, a denouncer of lies, a restorer of truth and good?
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I once heard a preacher who sorely tempted me to go to church no more.
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It is handsomer to remain in the establishment better than the establishment, and conduct that in the best manner, than to make asally against evil by some single improvement, without supporting it by a total regeneration.
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A great man is always willing to be little.
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Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant.
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If I should go out of church whenever I hear a false statement I could never stay there five minutes. But why come out? The streetis as false as the church, and when I get to my house, or to my manners, or to my speech, I have not got away from the lie.
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